Easy Come..Easy Go

By Jose B Rivera - N2LRB

December 13, 2016. Its a funny thing about Amateur Radio. One day you totally love that radio and the next day you’ve shipped it off in a trade for a better one. That is exactly what I did with my Icom-7300 and my Flex Radio 1500. The people at Flex Radio made a trade up offer on Facebook. The great thing about this offer is that you could trade in any radio you have for a Flex Radio. There was also some money involved, well unless you traded in a very expensive radio.

A Deal I could not Refuse
So I spoke to Matt on the Flex Live Chat and he gave me some basic information about how much Flex would give me for my IC-7300 (it was a very good offer) and how much money to make up the cost of the used (pre-owned) Flex 6300.

The deal was too good to pass up considering I was getting a Signature Series Radio and would able to use SmartSdr. I think that SmartSdr is the most gorgeous radio software there is out there. The next day I asked Matt if I could throw in my recently purchased Flex 1500 radio into the Trade Up offer. I would have no need for Flex 1500 once the 6300 arrives. I would then have too many radios and not enough use for at least one of them. Matt agreed to let me throw the Flex 1500 into the deal. This lowered the amount of money I’d have to pay for the deal.

In reference to the IC-7300 I did not use it much especially after getting the Flex 1500. It’s a great radio, but I prefer my panadapter on a huge computer monitor and not a tiny radio screen. It was therefore easy to part with it.

Shipment of Old Radios
On the 17th of November I shipped both the Icom IC-7300 and the FlexRadio 1500 to FlexRadio. It took 4 work days to arrive at Flex. But Flex needed time to evaluate both radios before charging my credit card and shipping the 6300 to me. As luck would have it Flex only had the radios a day or two before Thanksgiving Day and they were closed Friday after Thanksgiving. This meant that my radio could not possibly ship the week of Thanksgiving. The shipment would have to wait until the week after Thanksgiving. The following Monday I check with Matt and he said they were done with their checks, but that it would be a few days until it shipped. It was Flex’s busy season and it would take that long to get to my radio for shipment. I have found that the longer I have to wait for something the more pleasurable it turns out to be. And any Flex Radio is well worth the wait.

She’s Here!
The radio arrived on the 5th of December, one day earlier than anticipated. I was surprised to see ‘Out For Delivery” on my UPS App that Monday morning. My guess is that Christmas package crush is pushing packages ahead of schedule. I quickly walked home from work at lunch time and was happy to see the UPS man near my street. He was using the location as a launching point to deliver to our part of the neighborhood. I have to go get my packages are there is no doorman in my apartment building and unless someone is home ready to receive the package it will go undelivered. Besiesd I wanted to avoid a “Tried to Deliver, Will Try Aain Tomorrow” UPS Slip.

The UPS man began looking for my package and kept unloading box after box through the front of his truck. The back of his truck was packed and not accessible. 15 minutes later I was feeling bad for taking up his time and worried for me that the radio may have been on some other truck. He kept looking and after unloading 1/4 of the truck he found my radio box!! He explained that he does not pack the boxes into the truck so did not know where my package could be.

I was so happy to see that box. I gave him a $20 tip and thanked him as I rushed home to drop off the radio before hurrying back to work. It was very hard to go back to work that afternoon. It was even harder to go to work the next day, and the rest of the work week. I try to receive radio equipment on a Friday or Saturday to quickly set them up and test them out for a few days. Although I got to run the radio though it’s paces throughout the rest of the work week, I was not able to setup the profiles and digital modes until that following weekend.

First Impressions of the 6300
I am very pleased with my Flex 6300 and I love SmartSdr. I can’t see going back to hardware only radios. My only wish is that Flex make a 2M/70CM all mode SDR. For now I will have to look into getting transverters for 2M, 1.25CM 70CM and 1.2Ghz Bands. A little at a time.

What do I love about the Flex Radio
- The flexibility that SmartSdr officers, both now and in the future
- Being able to use as large a monitor as I can afford to view the radio spectrum
- The filters and receive on the Flex Radios
- Profiles, which allow me to go from SSB to Digital by selecting the profile for it. No more changing a myriad of settings to switch between modes.
- The great people at Flex and on the Flex Forum and Facebook. They have been very very helpful in my getting things up and running

This has been the best trade I have ever made. Thank You FlexRadio, especially Matt.